


Bound to Follow You Down

by mazily



Category: Rolling Stones
Genre: M/M, yuletide2006
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-14
Updated: 2009-11-14
Packaged: 2017-10-02 17:00:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mazily/pseuds/mazily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Music leaks out of the house, guitars and snares, dirty and solid and hot, and you dig your toes into the dirt." <em>Exile on Main Street</em>. Gram POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bound to Follow You Down

Cotton sticking to your skin, slick and warm, summer skies slipping out to taste the sea, and the light summer rain sizzles like your body's a frying pan. You peel of your shirt, toss it to the ground. It'll be there tomorrow, the day after, the week after; it'll lay there, smelling like moss and rain, in the grass behind Keith's old Nazi palace, until Mick comes back from his latest visit with Bianca and the unborn messiah. Until he picks it up between two fingers, like he'll catch the fucking clap just looking at it.

Music leaks out of the house, guitars and snares, dirty and solid and hot, and you dig your toes into the dirt. Sometimes you'll jam with them, sometimes you won't; sometimes Keith'll say, _"hey, Gram, get your sorry arse over here and let's show these wankers how it's done,"_ and sometimes he'll be so lost inside his music, so trapped inside a new riff, that he wouldn't even know you're there (won't even know you're gone, stepping outside to let the sun soak through your skin). There's a lot of pressure on you to go home, get to work on your own shit, but there's something in the air here and it's not all dope.

(Your manager: "Get your countrified ass back here, pronto."  
Gretchen: "I don't understand why you gotta be all-"  
Keith: "Oi, his lordship's off with the fuckin' wife, so let's," and his guitar's already in hand, and you're playing something sweet and true.)

Keith plucks songs out of the air, you've seen him do it, and you can feel them heavy in the air. Dancing on your shoulders, weighing you down, lying on your back at night. Gretchen hates it here. She says it often enough. You hate her here, too, and you love her, and you love the sky and the sun and the little French kids in the village. You think that, here, finally, you love the world.

The sun peeks out from behind a cloud, a tree, and you climb up to touch it. The bottle in your hand is empty-- you hold it to your mouth, trying to swallow every last drop of wine-- and you throw it to the ground. It breaks. The shards of glass sparkle against the grass, and the light turns them to diamonds before your eyes. You fall asleep cradled in the arms of a lover, or a tree, and the bark is damp and hot and scratches your face.

You wake up because you are falling. You fall because you wake up; something, a drumstick, hits you in the head, and you're awake and falling before you can scream. When you open your eyes, Keith is standing over you. A guitar strapped on and another held out like an offering, and he's laughing, laughing, laughing.

He's got a fresh bottle and a pack of smokes, and you sit with him on the ground and you jam. There's a breeze. Music. A song. You play.

*

Forks clanging, the baby's crying, _clank clank clank_, a guitar string snaps. Keith's singing. Bottles and laughter and someone's on the phone in the other room, someone's shouting, it's a mess, it's a riot, a racket, and you're drinking. You're drinking something smooth and red and smoke's everywhere, the air your lungs the food, it's everywhere. You never want to go home. This is home.

"Right," Keith is saying, one song finished and he's restringing for the next, one foot resting on the table and the other beneath him, somewhere, under the table and disappearing from the universe. "You can't just fuck off every time the sodding queen calls, all right? We're working here. Some of us, at least, are trying to record a fucking album."

There's ash in your wine. Mick tells Keith to, "sod off, you wanker, she's my wife, and pregnant, and-"

"Not to mention the fact that you're Mister Society now, too sodding important for your own band, for us-"

"I'm not, that's not what this is. Look, Keith, it's--" _plunk, plunk, plunk,_ and Mick's smoking, doing his best Belle of the Ball impersonation, while Keith squints and bites his lip and fucks around with a chord progression-- "not that I don't want to work, that I'm not here to work, it's just that I've responsibilities in Paris that I need to see to. And it's not as if you're always available."

"I am always available," Keith says, "when it matters. Always ready and willing, which is more than you can say."

They're still fighting, they're never not fighting it seems, but it's a song now, and across the table Anita smiles. Her eyes won't focus, and you want a little of what she's on. A little something, anything, and Keith's always generous with his dope when he remembers to be. There's a twang, Keith's guitar and Mick's voice, and that's you (that's yours, that's your music and your influence and your fucking song), not that Mick'll ever admit it.

"Hey, baby," Gretchen says, leaning over your shoulder, "let's go upstairs."

(You'd forgotten she was in the room; forgotten she was even in the country, let alone in the house, in the-)

"Go," Anita says. "They will do this all night."

"Fuck," Mick says. Keith laughs.

Gretchen's hand is cold against the back of your neck. "C'mon," she says.

You'd rather stay, rather stay and listen and watch, but you follow Gretchen up the stairs and into your room. As you're shutting the door behind you, you spot Anita spinning into Marlon's room. Keith's not with her. There's music in the air. Gretchen tastes like France, and you peel her clothes from her skin.

*

The floor is almost cool against your back, and your shirt is almost soft beneath your head. You don't remember last night. You're an outsider, slipped inside the gates, and you can disappear into the walls and watch. Listen. Mick and Keith and the words unintelligible, unimportant, because their voices rise and fall and it's like a song they just haven't gotten around to recording. They don't speak your language (you don't speak theirs).

You're thirsty, too much wine and too little water, and your head beats a nasty countertempo to the constant humming in the walls. You don't remember how you ended up sleeping under a table, and you're pretty sure you don't want to, ever, so you won't. You swallow the memories like valium.

The room shakes, an earthquake and then a shower of glasses and bottles, silverware and dishes. You prick your finger on the edge of something sharp and invisible, and you put it in your mouth, suck out the blood and salt. The table is shaking, trembling, groaning, moaning, and your finger stings between your teeth and you think, wait, _"moaning?"_.

The table is moaning, wet sounds and breathy ones, skin pulling against skin, and you turn around to see legs, one two three of them, and then the fourth sends a chair flying across the floor. You bite your tongue and close your eyes, and that's Mick's voice, Mick saying, _"fuck, Kei-, yeah,"_ and Keith answering with a grunt.

Blood in your mouth, and the air's too heavy to breathe. You need to leave, gotta get out of here, gotta run, gotta go. You gather your shit together-- shirt, shoes, socks all scattered around you on the floor-- and eye the ("no, yes, that's-") doorway. It's far, miles and miles ("you prat, fuck"), and it's a matter of focusing, of sliding across the floor as fast as your body'll move, of just going going going and never looking back.

Your palms are sweaty, and you drop a shoe (with a clatter, a crash, too loud, too much). You look up, and Mick glares back. Keith's head's thrown back, his hair sweaty and a mess, and his eyes are screwed shut. He groans, and you swallow. Mick's hand is on Keith's dick, Mick's staring at you (daring you to say something, you'd bet, that pompous ass), and then he leans down for a kiss straight out of a skin flick.

You leave the shoe where it is. Hopefully, Gretchen's still in bed.

*

Your feet are cold, and they shouldn't be, not in this heat, not sitting under an open window, eyes squinting against a blinding sun. Keith's upstairs, putting the baby to sleep or changing his diaper or just plain shooting up while watching the baby dream. Mick's fucked off to Paris again, so everyone's stuck in a holding pattern, waiting for the king to grace them with his presence. Everyone's standing around, waiting; everyone but Keith, that is, who yo-yos between working his ass off and unconsciousness and never the twain shall meet. Your fingers twitch. You want to sing. You want to get high, only you don't know where Keith's hiding his shit.

So you fold yourself into the chair, head resting on a stuffed bear, and try to nap until sundown. Daytime's something to get through, something to endure while you wait for the moon to rise and shit to happen. Everything's buzzing, and you must've fallen asleep at some point because suddenly Keith's shaking you awake.

"Huh?" You're not exactly functioning on all cylinders, not slipping between states like this. "That, what?"

"Oi, you awake then?" he says, and you nod, _yes,_ and scratch your stomach, shake the cobwebs out of your head. "Right, so I was sleeping, yeah, and then, well, no, that's not important, but I was sleeping and then this song just came to me, right, but no one's around, man, which is not on."

"So, what, you thought you might as well wake my sorry ass up, being that I'm twisted into a pretzel here anyway?"

Keith laughs, and shakes his head, and you want to be more mad at him than you are (but he's Keith, and he's playing that new song, smiling his goofy smile). You find the beat, _clap clap clap,_ and hum along when you've picked up the melody. There don't seem to be any words, yet, just a sort of mumbled "la la la," and Keith soars up above you in harmony.

People float in and out, this place is never empty, but it feels like you and Keith are alone in the world, like it's you and him and nobody else. One song ends, bleeds into another and another, and the night gets swallowed by the sun. Keith's face disappears into a shadow, and he stands, pulling you up after him. He walks toward his bedroom, and you follow. You want to sing; you wanna get high.

*

The king is back, long live the king, and you think you're going to be sick all over his shiny new shoes. You focus on your guitar. Pick at something you've been working on forever, it feels like, and refuse to acknowledge his existence (he's not here, he's not here, he's not-). Only the fucker's tapping his toes, doing a stupid little dance, and you can't help it, you react. The guitar's halfway across the room before you can think, _"fuck, my guitar"_, and Mick screams as he jumps out of the way, "what the fuck's wrong with you, you sodding-".

"With me," you say, "What the fuck's wrong with you's the real question." You don't mean to answer; you should've just walked away, gone to mourn the shattered neck of your guitar in private, but your mouth's always been faster than your brain. And then you're swinging, pushing, kicking, and Mick's stronger than he looks, the bastard, and you're up against the wall. Blood in your mouth, on his tongue, and you're pushing him away (you are, you're pushing him, hard, and what the fuck's wrong with him, what the fuck is he-) because this doesn't make any sense, none of it does (maybe it's that shit Keith gave you this morning, maybe there's something wrong-), and Mick curses and snarls and, fuck, that's Mick's head slamming against the wall; you're stumbling, you're fucking falling, and Mick grabs your hair, he bites your jaw (you bite his cheek, his ear), and if there's a song hidden in this somewhere you can't hear it.

"Fuck," someone says, and it's not you (it's not Mick), "Fuck off, both of you, you sodding perverts" (it's Keith).

You can't hear anything above the roaring. You spit in Mick's face, and get the hell outta there.

You can't look at Keith (you can't, you won't, but you look back and Mick's hand's on Keith's arm, and their voices are hissing yet tender). You wait just outside the room, ear to the figurative door, trying to decipher their frantic whispering (it's not English, it can't be, it's a secret code and you don't have a decoder ring), until Charlie walks past and you drag yourself away.

("He's my friend," you think Keith says.  
"Well, I don't particularly like him," you're pretty sure Mick answers, "and we'd get more accomplished if he'd just leave."  
"He's my friend," you hope Keith says, "and he stays," which is the last thing you make out before their voices fade away.)

You sit in your room, watching the dust dance with the sun, and you wait for Keith to come fetch you for another song.

*

It's raining, and the band's all in the basement, playing this and recording that and it sounds like a gospel choir gone rock 'n' roll down there, blues and country and a negro church all shaken up in a bottle. The music seeps up through the walls, and your fingers trace the lines, follow the cracks, and it's like nothing you know, it's everything you are, to sit here without a guitar in your arms. The band's all in the basement, and here you are upstairs.

Keith never shows up in your doorway, never says, "Oi, you plonker, let's go."

It's Anita, finally, who takes you aside, takes you outside, out back, like a pig ready for slaughter, and says, "You have to leave."

**Author's Note:**

> Title and summary from the Rolling Stones. Thanks to Luna for pointing out all the bad notes.
> 
> Research: Exile on Main Street, Performance, countless interviews, 33 1/3. Written for Tali in Yuletide 2006.


End file.
